Wish You Were Here. Victoria Connelly

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СКАЧАТЬ hand reached round and squeezed hers. ‘A breath of sea air always does the power of good,’ he said, ‘even if it does try to blow your head off your shoulders.’

      They followed the promenade along the seafront for a while, each lost in their own thoughts. The kiosks were in hibernation for the long winter months but Alice had spotted a café that was open and earmarked it for later.

      ‘Park me here,’ her dad said after they’d been on the go for about ten minutes, ‘and sit down next to me for a bit. It gets lonely with you stuck behind me and I can’t talk to you properly.’

      Alice stopped the chair by a bench and sat down next to her father. The bench was wet with sea spray and the slats were cold and uncomfortable but it felt good to be with her father and she took one of his large hands and held it between her own.

      ‘You’re cold,’ she said. ‘We shouldn’t stay here too long.’

      Her father didn’t reply and she saw that he was staring far out to sea and she wondered what he was thinking about, his eyes seeming to glaze over with memories of the past.

      ‘Remember we used to come here with your mother?’ he said at last.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ Alice said, thinking of how her mother would get up extra early to make up the most enormous picnic hamper you’d ever seen and then rounding up every blanket, towel and toy she could find, stuffing the car to bursting point. A day at the beach was a military operation but her mother loved every moment and she never lost her patience when Alice and Stella bickered on the back seat of the car or spilt ketchup or ice cream down their dresses.

      ‘You used to love those holidays,’ her father said. ‘Give you a bucket and spade and you could create a kingdom that would entertain you for hours.’ He shook his head and smiled at the memory. ‘Stella, however, would be bored after five minutes.’

      ‘She hasn’t changed much, I’m afraid,’ Alice said.

      ‘No,’ he said, as if accepting the fact.

      ‘We’re going away together in April.’

      ‘You two? On holiday – together?’

      Alice nodded and laughed. ‘I know! It came as a bit of a surprise to me too but Stella was in a bit of a jam and didn’t want to go on her own.’

      ‘So, where are you going?’

      ‘Kethos,’ Alice said.

      ‘Where’s that?’

      ‘Greece. It’s a little island off the mainland.’

      ‘What do you want to go there for? Our beaches not good enough for you?’ Terry asked with a grin.

      ‘Stella’s boyfriend booked it but they broke up and now she wants me to go with her.’

      ‘I didn’t know she was seeing somebody,’ Terry said.

      ‘I don’t think it was for very long,’ Alice said.

      Terry shook his head. ‘Poor Stella,’ he said. ‘So, do you want to go on this holiday?’

      ‘Yes, of course!’ Alice said, feeling the weight of her father’s gaze upon her. ‘I do, really I do, only I can’t help wishing you were going with me instead.’

      He laughed. ‘You won’t get me out of the country now.’

      ‘Never did, did we?’

      He shrugged. ‘There are them that’s made for travelling and them that’s made for home.’

      Alice smiled, remembering her father’s little motto from years gone by. It had usually been wheeled out when Stella made a scene about their holiday destination.

      ‘Weston-super-Mare?’ she’d complain. ‘It sounds like an old horse. Can’t we go to Italy? Jude’s going to Italy with her family. Lake Como.’

      ‘Let them get on with it,’ their father would say. ‘Lake Como has nothing – absolutely nothing on Weston-super-Mare.’

      Alice tended to agree with her father but she was more easily pleased than her sister which was just as well as she’d never had the budget for exotic holidays – one of the reasons she was looking forward to Kethos.

      She looked out over the grey waves of the North Sea and tried to imagine the aquamarine ones waiting to greet her in Greece. How wonderful it would be to feel warm, she thought. The last few winters had seemed to drag on forever, as if the White Witch of Narnia was back in business and had cursed the whole of the UK. Alice felt quite fatigued by it all and couldn’t wait to shed her baggy winter layers and luxuriate in the feel of the sun on her skin.

      ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ her father said.

      ‘Oh, I was just wondering if I’d be able to make it to that holiday in Greece or if I’d freeze to death first.’

      Her father chuckled. ‘Shall we go and get some lunch and warm up somewhere?’

      ‘Good idea!’ Alice said, leaping up from the bench.

      They went to the tiny café Alice had spotted earlier and she pushed the door open into the welcome warmth before wheeling her father’s chair through. She didn’t need to ask what he wanted; it was always the same. So, she ordered two full English breakfasts with all the trimmings even though it was one in the afternoon, and they washed everything down with two mugs of piping hot tea.

      ‘Do you want anything else, Dad?’ she asked after everything had been consumed.

      ‘Ice cream, of course,’ he said.

      ‘But we’ve only just thawed out!’ Alice said.

      ‘You can’t come to the seaside and not have ice cream!’

      Alice laughed. ‘Two ice creams. In cones, please,’ she said to the waitress who was hugely entertained by the idea but didn’t mind in the slightest. ‘One strawberry, one chocolate.’

      Her father always had strawberry ice cream. You could offer him fifty different flavours from cherry chip to lemon meringue and you could guarantee that he would seek out the strawberry.

      When the two cones arrived, they beamed at each other.

      ‘See what your sister’s missing out on?’ her father said.

      ‘Yes,’ Alice agreed. ‘It’s like being on holiday.’ And it really was. It felt wonderfully perverse to be eating ice cream in February with the wind blasting against the little café window and the great grey sea rolling malevolently towards the land. But it was even more wonderful being with her father. Not only did it remind Alice of her childhood when they’d all been together as a family, but she had his sole attention and Alice didn’t often have anybody’s sole attention. More often than not, people would talk through her or be looking over her shoulder or else they just wouldn’t bother talking to her at all. It was something she’d grown used to over the years but it was rather lovely to be with somebody who gave her his undivided attention even if they were genetically СКАЧАТЬ